Let’s have a quick chat about short coursing and participant obligations…
I’ve always been in favour of short coursing purely as a logistical option to get all teams in by a certain time. Bottom line is that some teams are slower than others and we don’t have two weeks available for the very slowest team to reach the finish. I wrote an article about short coursing for Go Multi article some months ago (you can read it here on www.AR.co.za).
Heidi and Stephan don’t like short coursing on the whole because they want to give teams the opportunity to feel the satisfaction of crossing the finish line. They generally made generous allowances at their races for teams to finish and they’ve always got niceties that encourage teams to keep going – like lovely meals at midway, compulsory stops (like the 6hr stop at midway camp – T4 – more to benefit the faster, sleep-deprived teams), roaring fires to warm up cold racers… Plenty of opportunity for recovery and then more racing. They’re incredibly thoughtful.
Then there’s the issue of three teams who I just heard have only now reached T1. Folks, that’s 75 kilometres in 36 hours. That’s TWO KILOMETRES AN HOUR! Looking at just daylight hours (approx 22hrs over the two days; plus a full-night sleep) they’re still only moving in broad daylight and glorious-couldn’t-ask-for-better weather at 3.4km/hr!
People, this is not acceptable. This is an adventure RACE not a hiking holiday with friends.
DISCLAIMER – If someone is injured and you’re all working together to carry them out then I totally take back these words. But if you’re all able bodied…
I know many people in these back teams – some very well – and I hope their ears are burning because I expect far more from them than this. You’ve entered a 500km adventure race! You NEED to average 83km/day to finish in the six days. 30km/day on foot is just not sufficient.
I totally get it that people pay entry fees to participate in events and that they have every right to use their time to the last possible minute before cut-off but there is a limit. Time available to move teams along a course and for marshals and logistics to wait around is finite; elastic, but finite.
At this stage recources at T1 (vehicles, medics, marshals, logistics) have been there for a good six to eight hours longer than necessary. Having teams 24hrs behind the leaders only 38hrs into the race is… a logistical nightmare. Heidi and Stephan are making plans to accommodate these teams – I don’t yet know what their plans are.
With four people in a team the slow-poke problem could be with any one of the members. The others would certainly be helping by towing, carry backpacks and motivating.
Every participant has an obligation when they enter races to make sure that they are prepared; not to win, but to finish. Fitness, equipment, team, preparation.
How do you know that you’re ready for a 500km adventure race? Well, you don’t. But you should be able to hike more than 30km in the mountains in a 12hr period… You should be able to hike 30km without hobbling with sore feet.
For sure, this post may step on some already-very-sore-toes but be sure when I see you that I’m going to ask, “What the hell have you been doing out there??!!!”.
The story better be a good one.
Keep in mind that we’ve got figures to work with i.e. 75km leg and 36hrs for back teams. You can do the math – as I did – too. And, it’s the first leg. It doesn’t make sense eh?
In chatting to Mike de Haast (Pure Adventures) last night I tried to put this post into perspective (racers are handing the back teams this post to read in isolation too; they haven’t read the ones that follow nor the story “(it) better be a good one” that I wrote about Pure Adventures…).
I asked Mike what he would say if I did the 65km leg from Lady Grey to Balloch – during his Wartrail or SkyRun events – in 28hrs. He replied to the effect that either I’ve got a very serious problem out there or I’ve come into the race very badly prepared.
Lisa, as usual, talk is cheap. I would like to see you navigating the 30km to Rockeries on a moonless winters night. As far shortcoursing is concerned.. I’m all for it if a race is to cater for elite international racers as well as us (gasp..!) snails. But then a proper shortcourse strategy must be in place with cut-offs and shortened legs. If not, measures need to be in put in place to exclude any possible snail and pesky tortoise teams from the start. That way all elite racers and elite bloggers can have their own little privately elite AR party….
Heya Con. Totally. I don’t disagree at all. Stuff happens up in the mountains. Sue was saying that you guys were spot on target and didn’t get lost (nor do a Tour de Lesotho like Pure Adventures). You made a good decision to bed down for the night instead of wandering around.
Not so sure about altitude sickness – it’s really not that high.
Feet issues 35 km into a race shows that you have stupid / the wrong / wrong size shoes and this is something that is pretty easy to get right when buying them and to check if you have done any training.
Heya Andrew. Many of the low-land foreigners and also the Capetonian racers were really suffering. Headaches, nausea and even vomitting. Very much altitude related because as soon as they descended, they improved. It may have something to do with rate of ascent too – not just the actual height. No high for us highveld people but from those coming directly from sea-level and then climbing up – fast – it definitely had an effect. Over 1600-1700m is high altitude and they were even higher. Nice physiology study eh?
I would want to hear from the teams before I made too many comments. My guess is that ppl were felled by altitude sickness in addition to other woes. That’ll have you on your knees where you should be trotting (been there, done that, from the Bridle Pass to Breslins), but the point is that if you are battling move any quicker at that early stage of the race you are unlikely to speed up, even given the beneficial effects of descent, if you have stuffed your feet or killed your ankles. Race organisation can only be spread so thin across the course before causing logistical problems that will at best give the director headaches, and at worst may put front teams in danger if emergency responses cannot come from where they were planned because they are trapped with the backmarkers. There has to be a strategy to deal with that, and if it can allow crawler teams to stay in the game without compromising the rest of the field, they should be happy.
You are so right Laura. I hadn’t even considered altitude sickness. I mean, it’s only a few hundred metres higher than Jo’burg. But, it had a really big effect on racers, especially coastal and low-lying types – so much so that they would choose to go down Icidi Pass just to get down!
Your second point about speed so early in the race… I had my eye on Stephan’s leg estimation times, which was a good guide as to when to expect first and later teams. Front teams were behind schedule at CP4 (Witsieshoek) by 1h30 or so and only 18-mins behind schedule at Mnweni Cultural Village.
Teams work so hard just to get to this race and if they drop back a lot early on (like this first leg) they hit all the timings for everything else so badly. It just amplifies the difficulty of the race for them as well as their pace slowing down with every leg, especially on foot.
I also agree with Lisa, elastic but finite. There has to be a point where the benefit of the whole counts more than the benefit of the few and in a case like this the logistics and organisation of marshals should be first.
Yip, very easy for us to comment from sitting on the sidelines. Short answer – adventure racing is tough, and navigation (typically) is what causes the huge gaps. Logistically it is a nightmare, and that’s why I agree with Shortcoursing or “Optional” CPs.
I respect each team that put their hand up for this adventure, even if they may not have been as prepared as they should have been.
Richard – correct. Chatting to Bad Medicine, they seem to have had their navigation on this first leg spot-on (unlike Pure Adventures, who they saw dashing here and there). Black night, freezing cold, can’t see a thing. They made a good decision to snooze for the night. But, this does stretch their time out – a lot. Physically they seem to have been in good condition throughout – just taking way longer than expected on this first leg. They reckon they did 95km on this leg. I’m not sure what route they took but I do know they came down Rockeries.
I am lying in bed as I am reading this, so most of these teams would think what can a lazy ass like me comment on their progress. But I also found it really strange that the 3 teams at the back were at Mweni village for quite some time. Transision areas can steal loads of time. If they did come down the ‘wrong’ pass though they could have been forced to go much slower than the 3.4km but the whole route at 2km/h, that’s really strange!
Yip. For some it was navigation. Others altitude. Maybe not so direct a route played a role (no errors though), ITB flaring up on the descent…
Agreed – in Expedition Idaho, at one point, we had teams spread out over FIVE different TAs, straining resources to the max. We have a short course system that we used that managed to get every team over the finish line in a 2.5 hour period (in the middle of a beer festival!), giving every team a great finish line experience, while giving us a finite finish time for awards, party etc… teams HAVE to move quickly, or get shorted – they can still race for 6 days – they just won’t go as far!
Totally on the money.
Watching the speed of those teams, it was apparent pretty early on that they didn’t have a clue what they were entering (unless injured).
People relaxing in the sun, shoes off etc, on the first day? Doesn’t make for race finishing IMHO.